There’s always a fine line to walk when you’re attempting to bring in characters from an established universe into a new video game that you’re “putting your own twist on.” On the one hand, you need to ensure that things follow a “certain pattern” so it doesn’t completely turn off fans. But on the other hand, you need to change things up so things don’t completely “go to script” and thus lack surprises. Insomniac Games has proven that they can do that with Spider-Man and his villains, but many might have noticed Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 made a big change to the weaknesses of Venom.
There will be some small spoilers going forward. You’ve been warned!
As longtime Marvel Comics fans know, Venom, regarding the Symbiote, is typically weak against fire and high-frequency sounds. In an interview with IGN, Insomniac Games Creative Director Bryan Intihar noted that they removed that weakness from the game due to Venom having a lot that could hurt him:
“Fire doesn’t hurt the Symbiote and Venom in this game, did you guys notice that? So originally, there was like five different weaknesses of the Symbiote, and we were like, ‘Oh my god, how are we going to communicate all these different things?'”
That’s a very interesting thing to note, and yet, they were able to make it work:
“We were like, ‘you know what, for our universe, we’re just going to keep it to high frequency sound. Someone was like, ‘why is Harry not getting hurt by the fire?’ and it’s like, if you noticed, in the rescue Tombstone mission, Pete purposefully says, ‘Is the fire bothering you?’ and he goes, ‘no, I don’t feel anything’, just so I can make sure that we cover our bases.”
While some might be mad about this change, it should be noted that the Symbiotes have changed over the years, including getting rid of some of their weaknesses in Marvel Comics. In one case, Carnage was able to “swap out” the weakness to sound for a very specific kind of magic. That doesn’t talk about the Knull stuff that gets REALLY trippy and powered up the Symbiotes to insane levels.
Plus, as players of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 know, the sound weakness was in full effect and even used by Kraven to subdue Peter Parker when he wore the Symbiote Suit. Or, at least, it did temporarily. Either way, Insomniac Games was sure to keep Venom as close to “the original” as possible while still having fun with the lore and gameplay.
